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The Circus Widens In Aftermath of Pirate Bay Verdict
MaulerOfEmotards sends along an in-depth followup, from the Swedish press, of our discussion the other day about the biased trial judge in the Pirate Bay case. "The turmoil concerns Tomas Norström, the presiding judge of The Pirate Bay trial, who is suspected of bias after reports surfaced of affiliation with copyright protection organizations. For this he has been reported to the appeals court (in Swedish; translation here). The circus around the judge is currently focused on three points. First, his personal affiliation with at least four copyright protection organizations, a state the potential bias of which he himself fails to see and refuses to admit. Secondly, Swedish trials use a system of several lay assessors to supervise the presiding judge. One of these, a member of an artists' interest organization, was forced by Mr. Norström to resign from the trial for potential bias. The judge's failure to see the obvious contradiction in this (translation) casts doubts on his suitability and competence. Thirdly, according to professor of judicial sociology Håkan Hydén (translation), the judge has inappropriately 'duped and influenced the lay assessors' during the trial: 'a judge that has decided that "this is something we can't allow" has little problem
finding legal arguments that are difficult for assisting lay assessors to counter.'" Click the link below to read further on Professor Hydén's enumeration of "at least three strange things in a strange trial." On a related note, reader Siker adds the factoid that membership in the Pirate Party exploded 150% in the week following the verdict. The Pirate Party now surpasses in size four smaller parties in Sweden, and is closing in on a fifth. Political fallout could ensue as soon as June, when an election for EU parliament will be held.
Professor Hydén continues with enumerating "at least three strange things in a strange trial" (translation): First, that someone can be sentenced for being accessory to a crime for which there is no main culprit: "This assumes someone else having committed the crime, and no such individual exists here... the system cannot charge the real culprits or it would collapse in its entirety." It is unprecedented in Swedish judicial history to sentence only an accessory. Second, that the accessories should pay the fine for a crime committed by the main culprits, "which causes the law to contradict itself." And third, that accessories cannot be sentenced to harsher than the main culprit, which means that every downloader must be sentenced to a year's confinement. Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.
Professor Hydén continues with enumerating "at least three strange things in a strange trial" (translation): First, that someone can be sentenced for being accessory to a crime for which there is no main culprit: "This assumes someone else having committed the crime, and no such individual exists here... the system cannot charge the real culprits or it would collapse in its entirety." It is unprecedented in Swedish judicial history to sentence only an accessory. Second, that the accessories should pay the fine for a crime committed by the main culprits, "which causes the law to contradict itself." And third, that accessories cannot be sentenced to harsher than the main culprit, which means that every downloader must be sentenced to a year's confinement. Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.
Cause political chaos by throwing sudden, and massive support behind a new political party. Wish Americans were capable of picking some other party aside from Republicans or Democrats.
If the Pirate Party really has that many people, and every downloader must be sentenced to at least a year's confinement, then everybody should turn themselves in and overcrowd the jails.
In some countries, their right to inspect a customer's system may be on par with the "right" of the public to make copies of DVD (here it is explicitly allowed unless the disk is protected, which is of course in almost all cases. :-)).
Ezekiel 23:20
RTFA. The judge is a member (actually a director in at least one case) of organisations that are lobbying to change the law, to make what Pirate Bay did illegal.
Pirate Bay's lawyer's argue that what they did was not illegal. Is the judge, who is committed to making sure it is illegal, the best person to apply the law impartially?
As mentioned in other stories this past week, the judge was a member of some groups that have agendas, and is in a leadership position for two of them I believe. I think at least one group is, like you say, simply a means of staying on top of current issues and being aware of the law, but that is not the case for all the groups he belongs to. I'm not pro-piracy, but I'd rather the pirates win than have these big companies keep extending control over our governments.
My webcomic
Civil disobedience isn't near as effective as political lobbying.
While the comments on the size of Pirate Party are correct, it can also be formulated slightly different: PP is, in the moment of writing, the fourth largest party in sweden (with respect to the number of party members). (source )
By the rate of new members, PP should pass 'Centern' in the coming week or something like that, and thus become the third largest party.
PP's youth organisation is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the largest by far (actually has more members than the second and third combined).
It should however be noted that party membership in Sweden is not widespread, thus the actual voting result in an election will not necessarily reflect the membership records.
If you would like to contribute to the cause (for nothing else than just to spite the big media companies), you can make a donation here.
While I'm not sure they deliver merchandise abroad, they have a small shop where you can buy the obligatory t-shirt. Yes, the revolution accepts Visa.
If you read past the headlines, Oobama didnt abolish torture, the US will still use it as much as before but they only changed WERE they were going to torture.
But many intelligent people are going around claiming that torture was ended with Obama.
Which is were his great power lies; he does something and people want to believe so much that they dont read the fine print.
The same holds in Sweden. The appearance of impropriety part exists in order to uphold the public belief in the court system.
The judge has just failed in that exercise.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Why would files containing otherwise legal things like checksums and file names be illegal exactly? Because they can be used for illegal purposes? But so can almost everything. For instance, I can use a hammer to hit you. People have done that in reality and hit others. Should we now fine every Home Depot that sold a hammer that was used in an attack? I don't think so. If the Swedish law allows this in the context of ISPs, then it's absurd. If I understand correctly, the professor mentioned in the article says it doesn't, so that answers your question.
Deus est fatalis
Why would files containing otherwise legal things like checksums and file names be illegal exactly? Because they can be used for illegal purposes?
In this case, because they were used for illegal purposes. Not "can be".
But so can almost everything. For instance, I can use a hammer to hit you.
TPB got done for assisting a crime. It is more like what would you do with the guy who bought the hammer you used to hit me, provided he knew that you'd use it for one thing only - to bash my head in.
If the Swedish law allows this in the context of ISPs, then it's absurd.
An ISP that stores information on behalf of a client and serves that information to other clients is required to block or remove illegal information if they are aware of the illegal information. For example, if you're a webhost and one of your customers set up a child porn site on your servers, you are required to block it if you are made aware of it.
(As a side note, TPB did remove child porn.)
If I understand correctly, the professor mentioned in the article says it doesn't, so that answers your question.
No, he doesn't.
God, if that isn't a literal prisoner's dilemma then nothing is.
If everyone cooperates (turns themselves in), then they all win by having successfully blockaded (DoS'd) the attempt to criminalize what TPB is doing.
If only a few do, they get screwed.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Indeed.
The basic problem is that "copyright protection", as used today (DRM, asshat lawyer scum, etc) is destructive to the geek/nerd/intelligent human being's basic desire to exercise their right to tinker.
We don't want to just buy something, then use it till it dies. We want to take it apart. Put it back together. Improve it. Repair it if it breaks. UNDERSTAND IT.
DRM on a digital movie - for one example - makes it harder to exercise our right to tinker. We can't easily pull a segment from it, or multiple segments, practice remixing it and splicing it and editing it and tweaking it and making something new, different, unique out of it.
DRM or "access protection" on a video game console - basically, a glorified computer - stops us from learning how to code new programs for it. From tweaking it to act as we want it to. From improving it - by adding storage, for instance, that reduces the crappy load times of disc-based consoles to something more bearable or that reduces the drain on the battery of a portable console.
Nintendo even wanted to get the US to outlaw the famous Afterburner mod - you remember, the thing they blatantly ripped off when it came time to create the Game Boy Advance SP, and the DS line?
The problem is, "piracy", or copyright infringement, is no different from other fields. Car geeks get to the point where they don't have to waste money on taking their car to a dealership or car shop. The car companies have in recent years tried to make this impossible by using proprietary shaped bits on certain fasteners in the engine, or packing things in super-tightly (in one case even making it impossible to change your oil yourself). The VW Rabbit, for another example, requires the removal of an entire wiring harness just to change a fucking headlight. And of course there are the "diagnostic computers", and the 5-year lag time during which the output codes are a "proprietary trade secret" to prevent non-Dealership car shops from being able to service them...
It's not just the copyright field. Freedom to tinker is something we should all have a right to, in EVERY field.
Actually, wrong.
The current bittorrent algorithm is weird. There is actually no need for the torrent file to exist, it could be downloaded from the first peer you connect to. This would actually make things easier for the user but the original POC didn't need that. Still the torrent file exists, but actually it contains nothing that can identify the legal status of the file that it's used to transfer, there are only inferences from the, user supplied, description (ie unreliable lies, eg: "Britney Spears sex tape").
Likewise, right now any one tracker is unnecessary, TPB and others are open trackers, I tend to add them to every torrent file I upload or download and I'm not the only one because I get more peers that way. Even then the only thing a tracker does is index hashes, so it's basically impossible for a tracker to say if a file is illegal even for clear cut cases because all the tracker sees is a random number and a list of IP:port pairs.
With both of these observations it is technically quite possible for a reasonable torrent url to be http://74.125.45.100/search?q=2ff13ed6d87e905d76ae66bf3efd5fb13f49fa1b even now that one kinda works.
All that remains is to say that bittorrent is illegal because it's only used for illegal material. This is easy to disprove and AIUI the defendants did this. That leaves nothing in the technical realm at which point the judge ruled entirely on "intent" effectively saying the TPB intended to help someone break copyright law so we'll assume they did and sentence them as if they were successful and the people they helped had the book thrown at them (twice).
Of course, nobody has been even seriously charged with the actual copyright infringement ... oops.
Then the question: what is copy protection?
In case of DVDs, the original copy protection was CSS. But this has been broken so much that it is not much more than a protocol, just like encoding a video to mpeg or to wmv, this is just a little more data mangling that has to be done to get back the original image. After all copy protection (CSS, Bluray's system, whatever) is a mere protocol, an algorithm that has to be followed to be able to display the original image/movie/music.
Nowadays when popping a DVD in my computer, be it Linux or Windows, I expect it to play, not seeing anything about this "copy protection". I also kinda expect to be able to read the raw data, and with that to copy the DVD. Without noticing copy protection.
How do you (as consumer) know it's copy protected, thus illegal, or not copy protected, thus legal? Because it is written on the disk? Then just writing it on the disk would be enough to "copy protect" it?
Could be a nasty can of worms if the copy protection lobby would really want to bring this to court.